Arioch's Analyst Thread

Thanks for that info, Thyrwyn.

Silverdawn: Thanks very much for the Social Policy clarifications and the other corrections.

Silverdawn said:

Change mountains from a terrain feature to a terrain type. They are the base for a tile with 0 food, hammers or commerce and can't be improved. The only thing you could do in Civ 4 was run a road on the diagonal. There seem to have been some comments recently that you can't make roads on mountains in Civ 5.

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What is "base terrain" and what is a "feature" is somewhat of a semantic argument, with the "truth" hidden in code we can't see (without a Civilopedia reference), but the tooltips in the videos and the icons of the Strategic View give us some good clues. Coast was (I believe) a basic terrain type in Civ IV, but if you watch the tooltips in the Civ V videos, you'll see "Ocean, Coast" indicating that Coast is now a +1 commerce feature on the basic Ocean terrain. I can't find any video tooltips on Mountains, but the Strategic View shows mountains with various background colors of plains, grassland, or desert. This is not definitive, but it's a strong suggestion that Mountains are a feature rather than a base terrain type. I agree that Mountains are impassable and roads can't be built on them.

Silverdawn said:

Change swamps from a terrain feature to a terrain type. Is there any evidence it is "on top" of plains, grasslands, etc? Is it possible there could be forest on swamp?

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Marshes are removable, like forests or jungles. If you look at the Stragetic Early image, there is a marsh south of Kyoto with an unimproved Sugar resource on it. If you look at the Strategic Late image at the same hex, the marsh is gone and there is a Sugar Plantation there. The marsh was a feature on a grassland base.

Silverdawn said:

Move the crater to the natural wonder section? I agree that it seems more likely that is the case.

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You are likely right, but I think it's safe to leave it as a terrain feature until we know more. Natural Wonders are (at least, in my reasoning) terrain features.

Silverdawn said:

Is it possible there could be forest on swamp?

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In life or in the game?

I knew it was in real life hence I was asking about how it is in civ. Those two examples Arioch provided are clearly indicating it is a terrain feature as those were from the same game.

Thanks for the explanations Arioch. I see what you mean about the mountain tiles.

My money's on the blue stuff being dye and whatever's listed as dye, tobacco.

12agnar0k said:

Above the tag is "Shield Icon" 16 all coloured yellow. I have no idea what thats about other than my assumption yellow might mean Neutral.

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I had a thought, I think this might be the "strength" or "health" of the city. I.e the bigger the city the bigger the number. Also certain buildings like a castle would improve it. I will record some data from the Gameplay footage, lets see.



From this data we can conclude two things,

1. Unless the person playing was playing against some very bad opponents, it seems we won't be able to see if an enemy has a unit garrisoned, or its type. Drum roll for suprise attack from a garrisoned unit just as we think the coast is clear .

2. It does appear (though its quite hard to tell when we don't know various factors, i.e is the city garrisoned, what buildings does it have, e.t.c,) that the "shield" icon may well indeed represent "strength or health", it appears to also be higher with a higher population, but not considerably, it is obvious however that garrisoning gives a large bonus.

I also have another note on this point, here from a screen shot we can see another piece of information of the "city tag".



This is of an enemy city, and their is some large modern warfare going on with tanks all around it, I assume this Bar with a red bit is the "health" of the city, or rather the health it has left, either the red bit builds up when its full the city is taken over, or the red bar starts full and falls and when its gone the city is taken over. One of the two.

So if this is "health" all be it current health. Assuming that is what it is, one assumes that perhaps the shield is "strength" i.e how much damage a city will deal out. Though the shield could also represent health.

Food for thought.

Calouste said:

Note the yellow farm at the bottom. It doesn't have a resource, so maybe it is an indication it is still being build?

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I think it is a resource, I think its wheat after you build a farm on it. Their is a picture of it as such next to the wheat resource in the site made by Arioch. I think its the most sensible answer.

I agree with 12agnar0k on all these points.

12agnar0k said:

So if this is "health" all be it current health. Assuming that is what it is, one assumes that perhaps the shield is "strength" i.e how much damage a city will deal out. Though the shield could also represent health.

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I think that a unit's "strength" in terms of damage dealing ability and its "health" in terms of damage absorbtion are one and the same. Which is the way it is in Civ IV currently, if I'm not mistaken.

However, I think what was being asked was not what the shield value meant, but why it was gold-colored in the case of Geneva in this shot.

as far as current info on the game goes all units and possibly all cities have 10 health, the strength determines how much damage you deal and maybe how much you recieve to said health.

Tanks have 30 strength or so, I doubt thier health is 10 .

As for the colour, as I also theorised, I think that may refer to "relation status" Yellow being neutral, red being enemies, green being friendly. Wouldn't know till we see different colours though .

battle ships have approx 10 health so do riflemen, like i said all unit seem to have 10 health, and so do cities i think

Thyrwyn said:

From 2k Greg in another thread:

Quote:
"I just checked, and at least in the current build you can have up to 22 other civs (23 including yourself.) This is not necessarily the final number as I'm looking at a beta version of the game so don't depend on it and don't yell at me if it changes! I'm not sure if this number can be easily raised in lua or if it would require a source code modification to change; I'll look in to that.

Oh, and that number does not include city-states. You can have a ton of city-states (there are typically more city-states than civs.)"

Emphasis mine.

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Could this mean greg is playing a build where the 18 standard civs, babylon, the 2 from the first DLC and two more (second DLC?) are included???

Also I find it very cool that there are so many city states. So on huge maps there might be 50+ "factions" on the map - Awesome!

I agree. The more factions the better. It seems that City States are going affect the game in some very interesting ways. Certainly diplomacy in general, but especially in terms of the diplomatic victory: the city states will have more votes than the "real" civs. It looks like this victory will actually take some real work, this time around. . .

Thyrwyn said:

the city states will have more votes than the "real" civs.

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Err... what if city-states can be razed...?

I'm sure they can - but remember that City States will have friends (to whom they grant benefits). These friends will defend their charges, so invading a City State will probably drag a few of their friends in as well. And all of this will be happening well before the Defensive Pacts in Civ IV would have been available.

I think I saw or heard from one of the interviews or previews that you can't raze city-states.I can't remember witch one though

Yeah plus a city state will be in a good location, like in civ4 I assume all cities will be located on good starting places with ample resources / food to ensure even play. This means a city state will be in such a spot, if you go through the trouble of beating thier armies and taking over the city, why not capture it instead of wasting the spot by razing it.

With lots of "factions" out on the map, over 45 on the biggest map we assume from gregs post, games will certainly be more fun, 23 civ capitals to conquer in domination mode, plus another 23 city state's to content with. OR 23 city states to be-friend for diplomatic victory, this game sounds and looks great so far.

12agnar0k said:

Yeah plus a city state will be in a good location, like in civ4 I assume all cities will be located on good starting places with ample resources / food to ensure even play.

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I'm very sure the end of the BFC mechanic also softens the problem with crappy city positions. We still don't know if tiles can be handled from one city to another, but generally the "why should I even conquer these crappily positioned AI cities?" should be almost gone.

crismac said:

I think I saw or heard from one of the interviews or previews that you can't raze city-states.I can't remember witch one though

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And i remember that someone from firaxis said in an interview, that cities can be razed but it takes more then one turn (one turn per pop. ?)

Hamil said:

And i remember that someone from firaxis said in an interview, that cities can be razed but it takes more then one turn (one turn per pop. ?)

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My mistake,I sure thought I heard that somewhere though

crismac said:

My mistake,I sure thought I heard that somewhere though

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no cause for discomfort.

"Upon capture, the conquering player is granted three options instead of the classic two. First, the victor can simply raze the city. Unlike Civ IV, however, this will take a few turns offering the deposed player a chance to liberate the city."

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/64438

Arioch,

It just occurred to me that Oasis seem very rare... In fact, I only recall seeing one!

Could it be that the Oasis is a Natural wonder also?? (from Africa)

I would bet it is. (As I said previously, I also think the crater is one)